Ancient Monster Croc Sported Shield on Skull

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LAS VEGAS — A newly described species of ancient crocodile with a
strange, shield-like skull may have chowed on 13-foot (4-meter)
-long fish in Cretaceous-era rivers.

The croc is known by a chunk of skull excavated in Morocco and
acquired by the Royal Ontario Museum of Canada from a collector.
Only now, however, have paleontologists examined the skull and
determined that it belonged to a new — and enormous —
species.

"It looks like the animal probably had a head size of two meters
[6 feet]," said study researcher Casey Holliday, a professor of
anatomical sciences at the University of Missouri who analyzed
the specimen.

Even more intriguingly, Holliday said, the animal had a
shield-like structure on the top of its skull that would have
supported skin and blood vessels much like the frills of horned
dinosaurs like triceratops. It's likely that "shieldcroc," as
the new fossil is known, would have used this structure for
display, Holliday said.

Giant crocodiles

Other specimens of species closely related to shieldcroc have
been described, but not since the 1920s, Holliday said. And
because those specimens were found by German archaeologists, they
ended up getting blown up in the bombings of World War II.

The newly surfaced chunk of crocodile skull reveals that
shieldcroc was a member of a group called the eusuchians, a
lineage that includes modern
crocodiles and alligators. Shieldcroc, which lived about 100
million years ago in the late Cretaceous Period, is the first
confirmed eusuchian ever found in Africa. [ Top
10 Deadliest Animals ]

"There's an argument as to where modern crocs really evolved,"
Holliday said. "This kind of pulls that equation closer to the
Europe/Mediterranean region."

Extrapolating from the size of shieldcroc's braincase suggests
that the animal grew to lengths of 50 to 60 feet (15 to 18
meters), a size that Holliday called "pretty ridiculous." More
likely, he said, those proportions are off and shieldcroc was
closer to 30 to 36 feet (9 to 11 meters) long.

Shieldcroc's relatively delicate, duck-like jaws were likely not
equipped for any ultra-dramatic feats like fighting T.
rex, Holliday said. But the crocodile was still pretty
fearsome, said study researcher Nick Gardner, an undergraduate at
Marshall University in West Virginia. Shieldcroc shared the river
with lungfish and ancient fish called Coelacanths that could have
grown to be 13 feet (4 m) long. It's very possible that
shieldcroc considered these monster fish to be prey, Gardner told
LiveScience.